[Met Performance] CID:318580



Don Giovanni
Metropolitan Opera House, Fri, November 25, 1994




Don Giovanni (427)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart | Lorenzo Da Ponte
Don Giovanni
James Morris

Donna Anna
Sharon Sweet

Don Ottavio
Stanford Olsen

Donna Elvira
Carol Vaness

Leporello
Herbert Perry

Zerlina
Hei-Kyung Hong

Masetto
Ildebrando D'Arcangelo

Commendatore
Sergei Koptchak


Conductor
Leopold Hager







Review 1:

James Oestreich in the New York Times
Larger than Life Versus Smaller

Waiting for Leporello: the Metropolitan Opera's revival of Mozart's "Don Giovanni" reached its third performance on Friday evening, still without Bryn Terfel in the cast. Mr. Terfel, the young Welsh bass who has riveted the attention of the New York music world this fall by meeting just some of the impossibly high expectations placed upon him in the Met's "Nozze di Figaro" and in recital, injured his back in the dress rehearsal for "Don Giovanni." The Met now says the earliest he could appear is Dec. 6.


?

He is missed, for the staging of "Don Giovanni" needs every larger-than-life figure it can get. Franco Zeffirelli's production originated in 1990, and was last presented three seasons ago. Mr. Zeffirelli also designed the sets, and they are monumental (of course) .


"It requires ? it cries out for ? a spectacular scene," Mr. Zeffirelli said of the Act I party when the production was new. "Otherwise, it is too lean, and you just have characters with an enormous space around them."


Yet for the most part, that enormous space, however decorative, is just what Mr. Zeffirelli provides. Hardly anything on stage suggests human scale. The characters look little more at home amid vast, cold columns or proscenium-size wreaths of greenery than they would on the moon. Much of the singing is delivered from or directed into reverberant recesses of the stage.


To make matters worse on Friday, many musical decisions seemed calculated to keep the performance smaller than life. Especially in Act I, Leopold Hager, the conductor, seemed unduly bent on speed. Right from the overture, the fine Met Orchestra was hard pressed to keep up, and singers lagged behind repeatedly or bumped one phrase into the next. Some of the loveliest melodic and harmonic gestures ever written simply scooted by unsavored.


Against all such odds, James Morris gave a firm, full-bodied account of the title role. He colored his tone effectively, though once or twice with so much subtlety that he failed to project adequately. Carol Vaness was hardly less compelling once she settled into the role of Donna Elvira.


Herbert Perry replaced Mr. Terfel as Leporello, singing with a small but attractive tone that wore down a bit through the evening. He seemed as much bullied by Mr. Hager's hasty tempos as by Mr. Morris's character.


Stanford Olsen, who had sung Don Ottavio in the first two performances of the run, also made an unscheduled appearance here, replacing an indisposed Jerry Hadley and acquitted himself admirably. Thought he was clearly over-powered by the Donna Anna of Sharon Sweet, he just as clearly surpassed her in refinement and agility, affording far greater satisfaction in the end.


Hei-Kyung Hong was appealing as Zerlina. Ildebrando D'Arcangelo, singing Masetto in his Met debut, proved serviceable but unmemorable. Sergei Koptchak gave his familiar stentorian account of the Cornmendatore.


next performance is to take place this evening, with Mr. Hadley as Don Ottavio.



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